Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group

Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.

emotional abuse advice, getting help is hard

I don't think that I had serious abuse, I know people have gone through so much worse than I have, but I do know that I struggle with self esteem, friendships, relationships, jobs, anxiety/depression, and anger. Especially hypersensitivity and overreaction to things. Growing up was like a rollercoaster, I was picked on at school and frequently felt unloved at home. My mom favored my sister and always told me so, and also lavished her with affection and gifts, but was hot and cold towards me. My parents both made fun of me, by "jokingly" respond if I ever got a compliment that my sister was prettier or "yeah, but she [something negative about my personality], or I was too ugly be loved, that no one likes me and always making comments that I was too bad or wild. Even though I was a straight arrow and a good student. Well anyway, as a child-teen I would act out by throwing fits or just getting angry and screaming. My parents constantly fought each other and do not have a loving relationship, but not a hateful relationship either, just not normal. They never separated. I had to walk on eggshells when it came to my dad, because I was never sure if he was going to be nice and funny, or mean and maybe hit me. So I'd have to wait until I could see and then if he was in a good mood I could relax for the day. If I forgot to do a chore, or made a mistake (like break a dish, spill something) he would box my ears and call me a moron or stupid or hit me with a paddle until I got welts. Lots of people I grew up with (small town) were spanked, so this was sort of normal. I tried to go to a counselor, who basically told me to get over it and prescribed me some anti-depressants. I don't get spankings anymore, since I'm an adult, but the other insulting "jokes" and pointing out my faults continue. At the same time, they are my parents and I want to have a relationship with them. But I'm so angry at them and they think that I'm exaggerating or just making it up. I know that going to therapy should help, but I can't really afford it, and also, although I am unemployed, my career/education is one that requires "fitness" to have the job. Meaning that they do look into mental health and whether or not you go to a psychologist etc. I had to divulge that I had went to the counselor and that I took medication for depression. I'm afraid that if I go to a counselor, mental health prof. regularly, that I could be considered unfit to practice. I feel like I"m between a rock and a hard place. I have talked about it a little with my friend of 10 years, and although she was nice, she was put off by it, and has acted weird towards me ever since. There definitely is a stigma of being someone that has depression or dysfunctional family. I don't know what to do. I'm even worried about checking out self help books at the library, because I am not sure how in depth the review board looks into it. If you omit the information, then it is a lack of candor/ dishonesty that is also a part of the review for fitness. I don't know what to do, but I know that I'm not normal and my life is like turning wheels. I'm not terribly disturbed- I don't have any drug problems etc, I have a post graduate degree, but I know I am not functioning well. I have a hard time getting a job and keeping them when I do. I am very lonely because I either get involved with dramatic, controlling people, or when people are normal, I dont seem to develop past the acquaintance stage. Basically I don't do well in social situations/ interactions. I feel like I"m actor playing the role of a normal person, but then it builds up and the crazy starts seeping through, like insecurities, paranoid that people dont' like me, over reaction to small things, and then people notice it and shy away from me. I just don't know what to do. I'm still taking the anti depressants, and I think they help, but not enough. I'll take any advice at all if it can give me some guidance.

Hey i've posted this article many times, but it just really describes how SERIOUS emotional abuse is.....Is very real and often very confusing.........
I hope you get as much as i got from it..

Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthyunworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection.

Emotional abuse can be as deliberate as a gunshot: &quot;You're fat. You're stupid. You're ugly.&quot;

Emotional abuse can be as random as the fallout from a nuclear explosion. In matrimonial battles, for example, the children all too often become the battlefield. I remember a young boy, barely into his teens, absently rubbing the fresh scars on his wrists. &quot;It was the only way to make them all happy,&quot; he said. His mother and father were locked in a bitter divorce battle, and each was demanding total loyalty and commitment from the child.

It also can be passive, the emotional equivalent of child neglecta sin of omission, true, but one no less destructive.

And it may be a combination of the two, which increases the negative effects geometrically.

Emotional abuse can be verbal or behavioral, active or passive, frequent or occasional. Regardless, it is often as painful as physical assault. And, with rare exceptions, the pain lasts much longer. A parent's love is so important to a child that withholding it can cause a &quot;failure to thrive&quot; condition similar to that of children who have been denied adequate nutrition.

Even the natural solace of siblings is denied to those victims of emotional abuse who have been designated as the family's &quot;target child.&quot; The other children are quick to imitate their parents. Instead of learning the qualities every child will need as an adultempathy, nurturing and protectivenessthey learn the viciousness of a pecking order. And so the cycle continues.

But whether as a deliberate target or an innocent bystander, the emotionally abused child inevitably struggles to &quot;explain&quot; the conduct of his abusersand ends up struggling for survival in a quicksand of self-blame.

Emotional abuse is both the most pervasive and the least understood form of child maltreatment. Its victims are often dismissed simply because their wounds are not visible. In an era in which fresh disclosures of unspeakable child abuse are everyday fare, the pain and torment of those who experience &quot;only&quot; emotional abuse is often trivialized. We understand and accept that victims of physical or sexual abuse need both time and specialized treatment to heal. But when it comes to emotional abuse, we are more likely to believe the victims will &quot;just get over it&quot; when they become adults.

That assumption is dangerously wrong. Emotional abuse scars the heart and damages the soul. Like cancer, it does its most deadly work internally. And, like cancer, it can metastasize if untreated.

When it comes to damage, there is no real difference between physical, sexual and emotional abuse. All that distinguishes one from the other is the abuser's choice of weapons. I remember a woman, a grandmother whose abusers had long since died, telling me that time had not conquered her pain. &quot;It wasn't just the incest,&quot; she said quietly. &quot;It was that he didn't love me. If he loved me, he couldn't have done that to me.&quot;

But emotional abuse is unique because it is designed to make the victim feel guilty. Emotional abuse is repetitive and eventually cumulative behaviorvery easy to imitateand some victims later perpetuate the cycle with their own children. Although most victims courageously reject that response, their lives often are marked by a deep, pervasive sadness, a severely damaged self-concept and an inability to truly engage and bond with others.

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We must renounce the lie that emotional abuse is good for children because it prepares them for a hard life in a tough world. I've met some individuals who were prepared for a hard life that wayI met them while they were doing life.
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Emotionally abused children grow up with significantly altered perceptions so that they &quot;see&quot; behaviorstheir own and others'through a filter of distortion. Many emotionally abused children engage in a lifelong drive for the approval (which they translate as &quot;love&quot;) of others. So eager are they for loveand so convinced that they don't deserve itthat they are prime candidates for abuse within intimate relationships.

The emotionally abused child can be heard inside every battered woman who insists: &quot;It was my fault, really. I just seem to provoke him somehow.&quot;

And the almost-inevitable failure of adult relationships reinforces that sense of unworthiness, compounding the felony, reverberating throughout the victim's life.

Emotional abuse conditions the child to expect abuse in later life. Emotional abuse is a time bomb, but its effects are rarely visible, because the emotionally abused tend to implode, turning the anger against themselves. And when someone is outwardly successful in most areas of life, who looks within to see the hidden wounds?

Members of a therapy group may range widely in age, social class, ethnicity and occupation, but all display some form of self-destructive conduct: obesity, drug addiction, anorexia, bulimia, domestic violence, child abuse, attempted suicide, self-mutilation, depression and fits of rage. What brought them into treatment was their symptoms. But until they address the one thing that they have in commona childhood of emotional abusetrue recovery is impossible.

One of the goals of any child-protective effort is to &quot;break the cycle&quot; of abuse. We should not delude ourselves that we are winning this battle simply because so few victims of emotional abuse become abusers themselves. Some emotionally abused children are programmed to fail so effectively that a part of their own personality &quot;self-parents&quot; by belittling and humiliating themselves.

The pain does not stop with adulthood. Indeed, for some, it worsens. I remember a young woman, an accomplished professional, charming and friendly, well-liked by all who knew her. She told me she would never have children. &quot;I'd always be afraid I would act like them,&quot; she said.

Unlike other forms of child abuse, emotional abuse is rarely denied by those who practice it. In fact, many actively defend their psychological brutality, asserting that a childhood of emotional abuse helped their children to &quot;toughen up.&quot; It is not enough for us to renounce the perverted notion that beating children produces good citizenswe must also renounce the lie that emotional abuse is good for children because it prepares them for a hard life in a tough world. I've met some individuals who were prepared for a hard life that wayI met them while they were doing life.

The primary weapons of emotional abusers is the deliberate infliction of guilt. They use guilt the same way a loan shark uses money: They don't want the &quot;debt&quot; paid off, because they live quite happily on the &quot;interest.&quot;

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When your self-concept has been shredded, when you have been deeply injured and made to feel the injury was all your fault, when you look for approval to those who can not or will not provide ityou play the role assigned to you by your abusers. It's time to stop playing that role.
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Because emotional abuse comes in so many forms (and so many disguises), recognition is the key to effective response. For example, when allegations of child sexual abuse surface, it is a particularly hideous form of emotional abuse to pressure the victim to recant, saying he or she is &quot;hurting the family&quot; by telling the truth. And precisely the same holds true when a child is pressured to sustain a lie by a &quot;loving&quot; parent.

Emotional abuse requires no physical conduct whatsoever. In one extraordinary case, a jury in Florida recognized the lethal potential of emotional abuse by finding a mother guilty of child abuse in connection with the suicide of her 17-year-old daughter, whom she had forced to work as a nude dancer (and had lived off her earnings).

Another rarely understood form of emotional abuse makes victims responsible for their own abuse by demanding that they &quot;understand&quot; the perpetrator. Telling a 12-year-old girl that she was an &quot;enabler&quot; of her own incest is emotional abuse at its most repulsive.

A particularly pernicious myth is that &quot;healing requires forgiveness&quot; of the abuser. For the victim of emotional abuse, the most viable form of help is self-helpand a victim handicapped by the need to &quot;forgive&quot; the abuser is a handicapped helper indeed. The most damaging mistake an emotional-abuse victim can make is to invest in the &quot;rehabilitation&quot; of the abuser. Too often this becomes still another wish that didn't come trueand emotionally abused children will conclude that they deserve no better result.

The costs of emotional abuse cannot be measured by visible scars, but each victim loses some percentage of capacity. And that capacity remains lost so long as the victim is stuck in the cycle of &quot;understanding&quot; and &quot;forgiveness.&quot; The abuser has no &quot;right&quot; to forgivenesssuch blessings can only be earned. And although the damage was done with words, true forgiveness can only be earned with deeds.

For those with an idealized notion of &quot;family,&quot; the task of refusing to accept the blame for their own victimization is even more difficult. For such searchers, the key to freedom is always truththe real truth, not the distorted, self-serving version served by the abuser.

Emotional abuse threatens to become a national illness. The popularity of nasty, mean-spirited, personal-attack cruelty that passes for &quot;entertainment&quot; is but one example. If society is in the midst of moral and spiritual erosion, a &quot;family&quot; bedrocked on the emotional abuse of its children will not hold the line. And the tide shows no immediate signs of turning.

Effective treatment of emotional abusers depends on the motivation for the original conduct, insight into the roots of such conduct and the genuine desire to alter that conduct. For some abusers, seeing what they are doing to their childor, better yet, feeling what they forced their child to feelis enough to make them halt. Other abusers need help with strategies to deal with their own stress so that it doesn't overload onto their children.

But for some emotional abusers, rehabilitation is not possible. For such people, manipulation is a way of life. They coldly and deliberately set up a &quot;family&quot; system in which the child can never manage to &quot;earn&quot; the parent's love. In such situations, any emphasis on &quot;healing the whole family&quot; is doomed to failure.

If you are a victim of emotional abuse, there can be no self-help until you learn to self-reference. That means developing your own standards, deciding for yourself what &quot;goodness&quot; really is. Adopting the abuser's calculated labels&quot;You're crazy. You're ungrateful. It didn't happen the way you say&quot;only continues the cycle.

Adult survivors of emotional child abuse have only two life-choices: learn to self-reference or remain a victim. When your self-concept has been shredded, when you have been deeply injured and made to feel the injury was all your fault, when you look for approval to those who can not or will not provide ityou play the role assigned to you by your abusers.

It's time to stop playing that role, time to write your own script. Victims of emotional abuse carry the cure in their own hearts and souls. Salvation means learning self-respect, earning the respect of others and making that respect the absolutely irreducible minimum requirement for all intimate relationships. For the emotionally abused child, healing does come down to &quot;forgiveness&quot;forgiveness of yourself.

How you forgive yourself is as individual as you are. But knowing you deserve to be loved and respected and empowering yourself with a commitment to try is more than half the battle. Much more.

Thanks for the advice. I already messed up because I started getting lonely and then my mom called so I answered. But then afterwards she just made me feel like crap. It's so hard not to talk to them, because I get lonely. I try to look up some counselors again, but even the cheapest is still pricey. I think I will have to wait until I get a job (I'm looking fro work now) and then I will be able to afford some. readying the article you posted I feel like that is my life. So I guess I'm not just extra sensitive or that I'm a negative person so I'm putting a negative spin on everything. It made me feel a little less miserable about it. I only feel miserable when I think about it, not every second of the day, but many times a day in short durations. Thanks again!

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